Just doing my normal thing... bite off more than you can chew then chew like crazy! Actually, I did make a few concessions on the design to speed up the modelling process. All three engines are identical from the swivelly bit backwards and all three undercarriage struts & housings are identical too. I also designed the undercarriage 'foot' such that it forms the u/c bay door when retracted, negating the need for opening doors and subsequent hydraulics etc. I would love to have the undercarriage fold and the engines rotate from VTOL to forward flight during the turntable but, realistically, that will add at least 5 or 6 hours work to the project so no guarantees at this stage. More screenshots shortly.

The modelling of the forward parts is mostly complete. The turret cannons are loosely based on the nasty piece of work hanging under the nose of an Apache gunship. Not a fan of war or weapons in general but they are fun to model!

Wellllll, despite Gyper not recognizing my good intentions... Yes, I'm working on a War Machine! I have already thrown three designs in the trash because I just didn't like them. I've settled on something, and am working away on the model.

It's not really far enough along for a WIP post, but THANK YOU RAXXX!!!!! I'll get this bubbyboo done by that deadline, fershore!

Another few questions: Does the video need to be exactly ten seconds long or can it go past there? Can the video be a turntable for the ten seconds and then a demo of the weapon lasting between five and twenty seconds? Or, since my design is symmetrical except for a single cluster of buildings, does the turntable even need to last the whole ten seconds?

Let's try to keep it a 10-second looping video. This way we don't have folks making long animations to try to make it more impressive than those who follow the 10-second requirement. Part of the challenge (for the ones who wish to animate the war machine), is to accomplish this as visually effective as possible while the model(s) are being rotated. It leads to there being blind spots during critical times during animations (such as if the front is animating while only its back is visible), and creatively avoiding those blind spots can make the turntable animation all the more impressive when done under the same restrictions as everyone else.

On that note, making the model itself obviously rotate with the camera while it's being animated is not "creative" and negates any reason for having a turntable animation in the first place

Even when symmetrical, having different views of a model help the user appreciate the detail and work it took to make it all the more, especially if the lighting or animations are not symmetrical.

Good progress so far, ENSONIQ5, the guns are well detailed and help make it look even more viable as a war machine (obviously )

@Ensoniq5: Great model. But, your gunship might have to fight mine. So, better fortify your armour buddy. I may participate this time (if I could keep up my enthusiasm for long enough). I will try to post some WIP soon.

Thanks for the encouragement guys. I put in a marathon effort yesterday (10 hours straight... to the obvious detriment of my garden, laundry, grocery shopping etc!) and have completed the UV mapping, and I am pretty much ready to animate the turntable. I will not be animating the undercarriage or engines, 10 seconds is too short a time to run a full retract/extend cycle on the u/c, as required for it to be a looping video, and speeding it up would just look silly. I will leave that for a future project.

As below, the machine is shown in RAAF livery (with a 'fractal' camouflage pattern derived from the Australian infantry uniforms). Considering the machine's primary role as infantry support it would probably be more likely to have army markings rather than air force, but I just like the look of the kangaroo logo better! It appears to have already survived a significant attack Indian8or, so your gunship better bring it!

P.S. What about the rotation ? I mean , since it's modeling challenge , let's move the animation to the second ...ehm, don't know the word ( ). Let's use the same scene, with the infinite rotation script, same lights and camera position ( like the " hall challenge " ). If Raxx could post an Anim8or file with that scene and all just copy/past their models into there ?